Wildflower
Page 1
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Barrymore, Drew.
Wildflower / Drew Barrymore.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-101-98380-5
1. Barrymore, Drew. 2. Actors—United States—Biography. I. Title.
PN2287.B29A3 2015
791.4302’8092—dc23
[B]
2015028835
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.
Version_1
To my friend family
My Flower family
My Kopelman family
And my daughters
Thank you
You taught me everything I know
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
“Wildflower”
BIRDS OF PARADISE
FLYING HIGH
JOSHUA TREE
MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE
TAURUS
THE SCHOOL OF E.T.
BRONCO
THE BLUE ANGEL
FLOWER LIFE
ADAM
THE ACTING LESSON
FLOSSY
DOMESTIC BLISS
JUMPING SHIP
DEAR OLIVE
THE SEAGULL
TODDETTE
KLUTZ
GERMANY
INDIA
POST PARDON ME
THE ROYAL HAWAIIAN
DOOR NUMBER ONE
DEAREST FRANKIE
OUTWARD BOUND
AFRICA
IN-LAW JACKPOT
ALL-AGES PARTY
Acknowledgments
Preface
I wrote this book without assuming anyone would ever read it. And yet I wrote for you, the person reading this right now.
If it feels personal for you, then I am so happy, because it was personal for me. I didn’t write it in any particular format. This is not a sweeping life story but an elaboration on times in my life as I remembered them. I asked myself from time to time, over the course of exactly one year, “What should I revisit?” or “What stories should I tell?” Because to me, these are stories. My publisher wanted to call this a memoir at first, but that didn’t sound right. “Memoir” seemed heavy to me, and I want this to be light.
This is a book you can dip into and read when you want. A book to read when you want. But I can only hope that every once in a while it catches you inconveniently feeling something. It was inconvenient writing it with two young daughters. They are my universe, and I felt terrible pulling myself away from them to write. Ever. But every mother knows how this feels.
However, I discovered over this year that being a mother is at times hardest in the transitions. Pulling yourself away you feel like the devil. But once you do, you can be more present. And the gift is that once you pull away from your responsibilities, you can fully be a parent. It’s being present that matters most. And when I was writing and I shut my door, I would let the inspiration flow. For some reason I had to write this book. I have become more private every year, and yet these stories were beating at the door of my heart, screaming, “Let me out!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Maybe it was that I have always dreamed of being a writer. Those people who do the typing and the transporting are my heroes. I have never been able to do that. I have never been brave enough. Smart enough. Had enough to say. I had not exercised those abilities in my life. And now I have, alone in a room, and yet as I say in the book, you do nothing in this life alone. And most of all, you do not live alone. And therefore we all have stories to tell.
These are mine.
Wildflower
Out there in the world of chaos
All the concrete and fumes
People with determination behind the wheel
The soles of their feet wiser
Some faces with souls of routine
Others with high hope of their destination
Among all the human and industrial invention
My eyes find a tiny wildflower
With pretty yellow petals
And a brown button nose
Reminding me that there is beauty everywhere
A compass of nature
A second of stillness in my mind
As my heart races to the rhythms
Of it swaying in the wind
You are that Flower,
Reminding me of what is real
West Hollywood, 1978
BIRDS OF PARADISE
In 1975, the neighborhood I grew up in, West Hollywood, was a colorful place. It had the aesthetic of old cars, the way everyone idealizes Havana, and the wildly different styles of architecture from one house or apartment building to another. Santa Monica Boulevard with its pimps and old movie theaters. And the drag queens, that was just a fact that the kids from our hood grew up with: “Mom, is it a man or a woman?” and then the parents could probably individually decide how to answer. But having this colorful world all around is what made this area so interesting.
My mother, then named Ildiko Jaid, raised me as a single mother there. She was an aspiring actress who did bit parts here and there, and worked two jobs at the infamous Comedy Store and also at the notorious music venue the Troubadour. She was living a life around many wild artists and the whole scene of that era was very hedonistic. She was also friends with many gay men, and so that just became a part of life too. Their style and their wit were comforting. We lived on Poinsettia Place in a tiny duplex that had a giant wall of bougainvillea up the front, about twenty-five feet high, which to a little kid seems like a skyscraper, and it made our place stand out on the street. This dramatic, hearty flower with its deep maroon made me so happy. I was so in love with its color, and it taught me that beauty could live in a seedy area. Not only live but also be strong!
We lived on one side of the duplex, and our neighbor on the other side was Joanie Goodfellow. Her son was Daniel Faircloth, and it was only after, years later, that it struck me how distinct their names were. At the time she was just another single mom, much like mine, whose man had taken off, leaving just her and the kid. I still can’t remember the name of the father, but I remember he was from somewhere like Delaware or Denver—neither place I knew, or geography in general—but every time she talked a
bout him I would picture him in a western shirt or cowboy boots, don’t ask me why. Men left and moms worked were the messages I was receiving from our lives in this duplex.
I still have no clue what Joanie did. Joanie was eccentric. She had electric-blue or neon-green hair, and would slink around the apartment like an exhibitionist with very little clothing, often having two cockatoos perched one on each shoulder. At first I was wide-eyed about it, but eventually I would have been more shocked to find it any different. Strange what we get used to.
Her son, Daniel, became my best friend, even though I didn’t even know what that was at the time. But we would sell apples up and down the street and beat the shit out of each other. A typical West Hollywood friendship, I think. When it was time for him to go to bed, every night was the same routine. Joanie would say, “OK, time for bed,” and he would immediately start climbing the curtains in their living room. It was as if he was in a gym, making his way up the rope. He would scream, “I don’t waaaaannnnnaaaaa go to beeeeeeddddddddd.” When he had almost reached the top, Joanie would just pluck him off and throw him in the bedroom down the hall. Our duplexes each had two bedrooms. It seemed spacious to me. I was actually proud that these single moms could provide a two-bedroom situation for us kids. To all have our own rooms was nothing to scoff at.
There was also a teeny-tiny backyard with a cheap swing set and an avocado tree. To say that I ate ten avocados a day off that tree was no exaggeration. I loved that tree. It nourished me, and other than the cascading bougainvillea out front, it was my only source of nature. Just like me, the tree and the flower bush didn’t mind that they were existing among crime and X-rated movie theaters. We were all just really happy in our fantasyland. In fact the significance of the avocado tree is still as strong as can be for me. I even have it in my will that I want to be buried under one, or have some of my ashes put there. Some avocado tree preferably on a hill that is nowhere near anything this time. Just up on a hill on a rolling mountain, preferably with an ocean view. I can dream!
For now, my nature consisted of the things living and growing at Poinsettia Place, and most jarring to me was the strange-looking plant on the side of the house. There was a narrow, long driveway that led from front to back, all concrete. It was where my mom would park her beat-up, discolored temperamental old Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. But alongside the driveway, lining the house, were plants called birds-of-paradise. They have a long, pale green stalk, with bright orange pointy petals and some blue accents. Picture the colors that the gas stove burner emits. Blues and oranges. They are spiky and look like they belong in Palm Springs or the Galápagos. Not hidden in West Hollywood. I would stare at these things, wondering if they were plants or flowers. They looked like angry flamingos. They scared me. I would look for the eyes, but I was always afraid they could come to life and bite me. I stayed away, but then would tiptoe around them every once in a while with sick fascination. In a life where, as a kid, I had many questions about what was this or what was that, this vegetation was the embodiment of everything in the neighborhood: It couldn’t be defined.
Joanie and Daniel moved out when I was around four or five. I was sad. But then this really nice couple with a Dalmatian named McBarker moved in. Gina and Joel were a cute, attractive, lovely couple, and I took right to them. Especially Joel, as I was starved for anything “straightforward,” like an unconfusing male! There was no “are you gay, straight, a man or woman?”—I know you’re not my dad, but as Mr. Rogers would say, won’t you be my neighbor! I loved them. We all celebrated Christmas together on their side of the duplex. Joel came out in Christmas-patterned pants, and Gina was just a beautiful Latina woman who was in small movie parts and Budweiser calendars. Joel was an actor too. We all opened presents, and I was just having the most normal Christmas Day and soaking up every second of this traditional moment in our lives. Joel gave me a teddy bear. I named it Bailey Bear, after Joel’s last name, and I just couldn’t have loved it more. They were a great couple. When they got married, we got to go to their wedding, and even when they had the rare fight and I could hear it on our side of the thin duplex walls, it was comforting to me to hear a man’s voice. They made me feel so safe. They were good people, and they were straightforward in a town that was full of cryptic lives.
These were happy years, the most stable years I’d ever had. We lived in this house for seven years, all the time I could remember. But when I turned seven, after E.T. had premiered and I was starting to get a lot of other film offers, my mother’s and my life were changing. I will never forget one night when we were all waiting to go to dinner together at the duplex, and my mom pulled in with a brand-new BMW 320i. I couldn’t understand. Where was the beat-up Karmann Ghia? What was happening? Change felt scary. We all went to eat, and I felt like I was on a bad trip. I didn’t like it. A few weeks later, I came home and looked up in horror as I walked up to the duplex. Someone had cut down the bougainvillea bush. I started to cry. This was the entire cover for our house. It was beauty. It was nature. It was the thing that made me say, we don’t really have money, but you don’t need money to marvel at something! This giant waterfall of burgundy was just gone. I ran back to the avocado tree, terrified. It was still there, but it was completely shaven. That was the day I learned the word “pruned.” My heart sank. It was just a trunk and branches. I was told it would grow back and this is what had to be done in order for it to be healthy. I was sick. We had lived here for seven years and no one had pruned or manicured anything and everything was fine! Was there a new gardener? The car? I ran around in circles. I felt like everything was crashing down around me.
And then it dawned on me: The birds-of-paradise, what state were they in? I made my way slowly over to the side of the house where Joel now parked his old Mustang. Were those freaky birds-of-paradise unscathed, or had they got the royal treatment too? I made my way around the corner, one foot in front of the other, waiting for the reveal . . . and then I saw them. Green stalks with no heads. They had not escaped whoever came here and took it all away. They were no longer intimidating. They had been guillotined, and there they stood, awaiting rebirth. And for the first time, I felt heartbreak. They didn’t deserve it. Sure, they were different. Sure, I had never really understood them. But right now I just wanted to hold them and tell them it would be OK. And then I realized I didn’t know if it would. I didn’t understand any of this.
Later, my mom came home; she had quit her job, and told me that she was going to manage my career full-time. And then she dropped the big bomb: “We’re moving to the valley! I bought a house, and we are going to have a real home!”—as if it was some selling point. I was disgusted. Great. I will be the breadwinner. We will leave Joel and Gina and McBarker and go move to what felt like a planet away. As if I had been lobotomized, we packed our things and moved into our new home, indeed in Sherman Oaks, in 1983. It’s why I still talk like a valley girl. That cadence snuck into my life at that spongelike age of eight and never left. I will be talking to a high-powered CEO and I will hear myself in my own head and think, friggin Sherman Oaks!
The only good news was that the house had a pool. But I missed Poinsettia Place. I never heard from the team of Goodfellow and Faircloth, but I always wish them well. Years later, when I was taking care of my dad when he had cancer, I wondered if Daniel was reconnecting with his father somewhere out in the world. I wondered if Joanie still dyed her hair. I wondered how Joel and Gina were. I heard they had kids and possibly moved to the valley as well. I think about that avocado tree.
As an adult, I was determined to get back to headquarters, and I moved back to West Hollywood. I was in charge of my destiny now and I bought a house right in the old neighborhood. I wanted to be in the familiar.
Things have cleaned up a bit, and the city has spruced up the joint. I take my kids to the same park I went to as a kid, and today I took my daughter Olive for a lollipop in the old convenience mart I would go to with Daniel to buy goodi
es with the change we made from selling our apples.
Currently, I work with a landscape architect named Marcello. Marcello and I have long discussions about plantings and, most important, prunings. He knows that we cannot cut as much as a leaf without deep discussion and reasoning. He sees me start to flip, but I am incredibly respectful. He is the expert, so he takes me through why he has to cut the leaves off the vines every year. He tells me that they literally get a fungus that will kill them unless we trim them annually. He helps me understand that it’s death or trimming, and these are my options.
He is delicate with me, and I try humor with him. I jokingly tell him that I will cut off his limbs and chase him around with them. He laughs. Yet there is a small part of him that thinks I am a little crazy. Maybe there is 1 percent of him that doesn’t think I am joking. Maybe that’s good. We also have those days where he can see that look in my eye, and we go and buy bougainvillea by the truckload and do large plantings. I plant as much bougainvillea as possible around my house, and I find new areas to put more and more all the time. He and I are cultivators together.
When my grandfather John Barrymore would hang out with W. C. Fields, W. C. apparently was obsessed with his rose garden. Behind his desk he had a large chalkboard and written on it one day, in large letters, was “Bloom you bastards! Bloom!” A man after my own heart. I love flowers. I protect flowers. If I see a commercial for a spray that kills dandelions, I’m like “Why?” and it pains me. I am on the first line of defense of flowers.
And I wonder to this day if those birds-of-paradise ever grew their heads back. The ghosts of them bloom fresh in my memory all the time. They, like all of us in this neighborhood, were wild. Let us all be like them and defy tradition, and yet create our own traditions at the same time. Let us all be wildflowers!
Skydiving, 2000